Parallel to the Frankfurt Book Fair the little but fine fair and come together for art and design publishing entitled First Issue takes place at Basis Frankfurt.

It centers around the rhetoric question “Dead or alive?” which refers to the discourse of the future of print in times of growing digitalization. Nevertheless there will be a(n already sold out) conference discussing this topic with participants like Charlotte Cheetham from manystuff and Urs Lehni First Issue’s answer is obligatory because its exhibition shows a bustling and prospering scene of small publishing houses and self publishers.

One of them are for example the “Ruiné Boys” Benedikt Fischer und Neven Allgeier who are also my office-flat share (called Masterdart) homies. In their Ruiné magazine they try to draw the essence of a new zeitgeist in a very avantgardistic manner, combining fine photography, design, fashion and a kind of surrealistic inspired poetry – sounds pretty weird but it works well. Another example is the Shake Your Tree collective which publishes magazines together with young artists and designers giving an unconventional subjective, playful and often surprising view on prevailing life and culture.

Although I sometimes ask myself why self publishing is still such a huge and always so very subjective designer thing (in comparison to the very small number of more text content based publications) I’m looking forward to see some familiar faces and to discover some new collectable jewels this weekend.

J.

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